Work

The Lightweight State: New Histories of Tax, Money, and Public Debt in the United States

Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: New fiscal histories of the United States are in a state of efflorescence. Revisionist work infused with economic heterodoxy and social histories of capitalism have rescued fiscal topics from staid institutionalists, producing work that should enrich the study of inequalities of all stripes. By assembling a collection of recent works on money, public debt, and taxation—subjects treated in isolation within the literature, but which form a totality in practice—this review attempts a composite portrait of the United States’ fiscal state formation in the long run. Present in the foreground and at each stage is real estate: the iconic plot of farmland or single-family home.
Institution: Brandeis University
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4411350508
FWCI: 0.973
Cites: 2
Cited by: 1
Related to: 10